Is making Thor's Global Envelope polyphonic really as easy as

[thedjjudah]

Voice Key Gate > 100 > Global Env Gate?

Surely it's not that easy!

[selig]

Voice Key Gate > 100 > Global Env Gate?

Surely it's not that easy!

I mean, you should know, right - did it?
There is still only one global envelope, no matter how you trigger it (it already receives poly triggers, it just only responds to the last trigger, interrupting the previous envelope position.
But is it working or not?

[thedjjudah]

It seemed to work for me.

[selig]

It seemed to work for me.

Short answer, no. You're actually not changing anything with this routing, since the Global Envelope already receives poly note input.

Whether or not it appears polyphonic could depends on how you test it. If you play a three note 'block" chord (all notes start/end together) it would sound pretty much identical whether the envelope was mono or polyphonic.
If you play that same chord, but instead of all at once you add one note every bar, you can hear the difference.

But first you need to listen to how a 'known' polyphonic envelope behaves for comparison. If you do an obvious (high Q) filter sweep with slow attack/release the difference would be clear. With a poly envelope (such as the Filter ADSR in Thor), there will be three distinct sweeps, one bar apart (most obvious when they each reach the top of the envelope and reverse direction, one after the other and one bar apart).
With a mono envelope when you add the second note nothing will change - you won't hear the sweep start over (at least with Thor, which is "first note" triggering of mono modules by poly signals for Global Env and LFO 2). Same for when you add the third note, the original envelope will continue to sweep as if nothing happened!

But think about it this way: why would the trigger signal give a module a feature it doesn't already have? Why would a poly MIDI chord make a mono oscillator play a chord?
Plus that other big thing I mentioned at the start: the Global Envelope is ALREADY receiving poly gate input via the "Gate Trig" button (in conjunction with the master Trigger settings).

Conclusion: in some cases "creative" routing may allow doing things you can do any other way. Thor is famous for this, allowing you to offset the LFO rate to achieve super slow LFO rates WELL below the lowest knob setting, and you can do many similar things throughout Thor - just not this one particular thing, sorry to say. But keep exploring, this is exactly how cool tricks are discovered in the first place!